Lebensfreude

Last August, while visiting friends in Switzerland, I pulled a card out of deck that they used for their children. Each card contained a suggestion, of a sort, for kindergarten students about to face the day – things like ‘Cherish your friends’ or ‘Smile’ (in Swiss-German, of course).

The card I pulled out said ‘Lebensfreude’, and I liked it so much I wrote it down.

My basic, basic grasp of German didn’t prevent me from stringing the meaning together. Life joy, I exclaimed. I looked at the card and the happy stick figures on it, and thought, ‘Yes, this is how we’re going to go today.’